The Israeli police attacks on Silwan neighborhood

Eyes on the Ground in East Jerusalem- The Jerusalem police have been putting a lot of pressure on the Palestinian residents of Silwan in what seems to be an attempt to break the social and political leadership of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The recent wave of attacks started a few weeks ago when Adnan Ghaith, one of the local leaders of al-Bustan neighborhood, received an order of expulsion from Jerusalem for four months.

Last week, Jawad Siyam, the director of the Madaa Community Center in Wadi Hilweh was arrested for three days and then released into house arrest. This was after a Palestinian man filed a complaint of assault against him, but Siyam was interrogated mainly about his political and social activity in Silwan. One of central reasons given for the extension of his arrest was a suspected conspiracy to commit a crime, yet the charges that were filed against him today mentioned only the alleged assault.

Probably the most severe, though, was the police attack on Battan Al-Hawa last Friday night and the arrest of Zoheir A-Rajabi. Battan al-Hawa is one of the most tense places in Silwan, if not in all of East Jerusalem. Tension there began when settlers built an illegal building, Beit Yonatan, in the heart of the neighborhood. The armed guards of the settlers, the armored jeep taking them in and out of their house and the added police patrols have been the focus of many quarrels, brawls, and in some cases stone-throwing incidents that ended in clashes with the police, tear gas in the streets and in the homes, injuries and arrests.

When I came to Battan Al-Hawa on Saturday morning, I could see the traces of what had happen the night before. Four armed policemen walked down the alley, attracting the attention of the children who were playing in the street. They were coming to man the military-post that the border police put up on the roof of one of the Palestinian homes a few months ago, without the required injunction. Read more